When KitKat launched, Google made the odd decision to make one of the headline features, a brand-new launcher, exclusive to the Nexus 5. The new launcher was actually a merging of the standard home screen with the Google Search app. This allowed for things like always-on "OK Google" hotword detection (while on the home screen) and easy access to Google Now. While Google didn't make the app available to non-Nexus 5 customers, enterprising Android users found that they could grab a few files off the Nexus 5, and the new launcher would work on just about anything. There were a few bugs, but the new home screen has been quietly receiving updates to deal with running on other devices.

Today, Google finally released the new launcher on to the Play Store for other devices. Owners of older Nexus devices and any Google Play Edition device can update to the new launcher via this link. The launcher, which was formerly known as "Google Home" or the "Google Experience Launcher," has been renamed to "Google Now Launcher," a reference to Google's predictive search card interface. The new launcher is an official way to easily get a close-to-stock experience on any device, and it pushes users toward performing more Google searches. It also takes advantage of new Android 4.4 features like transparent status and system bars. Saying "OK Google" while on the home screen will trigger the voice recognition to start listening for commands.

For now, this is limited to stock Android devices, but will the company soon open this up to other devices? Will Google eventually package its home screen into the licensing requirements for the Play Store? It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the Android ecosystem, but for now, Google has taken another baby step toward general availability of its home screen. If you're interested in trying out the new launcher, just grab it from the Play Store and enjoy your searches.

Dangit! I can't install it on my Galaxy Nexus from Verizon (which still hasn't received the Android 4.3 update that exists for it).

Which is, in no small part, why I'm leaving Verizon. I went back and forth with their so-called support, and they wouldn't even admit that they were behind on updates, much less that their updates suck.

I believe 4.4.2 is available for download from Google's factory images page, and it's a pretty easy thing to ROM a phone using mrskip's toolkit (availabe on XDA Devs, but I think the homepage is skipsoft.com). The toolkit will also download the relevant factory image.

Except on my computer at home, on which I made the mistake of installing the Samsung drivers.

I'm torn on this issue. On one hand, GEL encourages Google to keep more of their changes internal to their own private release, and other close to source launchers like Apex and Nova already seem to have the near-stock launcher need covered. On the other hand, a launcher with the backing of Google is much more likely to be have mass-appeal and use, giving the Android ecosystem more cohesion behind a single launcher.

I've been running this launcher for a while now on my HTC One (GPE rom...got the launcher from xda to work on it) and really like it. Being able to just talk from the home screen is more convenient than I thought it would be.

People can use google now? I can't get it to show anything but the occasional email that I have yet to read.

It doesn't let me configure anything. It only guesses what I want. I guess even I am a long time gmail and google calendar user I have nothing for it. I don't know if I will install it on my nexus 7 2013 tablet. I wouldn't mind a bit more configuration options for the launcher.

I'm waiting to see what the next Nexus phone will be like before I upgrade, but that Nexus 5 is looking very tempting. If the Nexus 6 is curved, I'll be getting a 5 and kicking myself for waiting so long.

you can tweak MUCH more of it using Wanam and Xposed.... might give that a try, it's awesome. Custom rows and columns, resizeable icons etc.

And after downloading this, install Wanam and Xposed installer and get the XposedGEL module. /it will allow custom rows and columns as well as let you shrink icons in homescreen, app drawer, folders etc. It's AWESOME!

If your device isn't supported officially in the play Store you can still install this launcher and it's search.apk counterpart and it works perfectly. I'm using it on my Note 3 as we speak.

Dangit! I can't install it on my Galaxy Nexus from Verizon (which still hasn't received the Android 4.3 update that exists for it).

To be clear, it still wouldn't work for you with the 4.3 update since it requires 4.4. I get the "Your device isn't compatible with this version" message when view the app in the Play store on my stock GSM Galaxy Nexus with 4.3.

People can use google now? I can't get it to show anything but the occasional email that I have yet to read.

It doesn't let me configure anything. It only guesses what I want. I guess even I am a long time gmail and google calendar user I have nothing for it. I don't know if I will install it on my nexus 7 2013 tablet. I wouldn't mind a bit more configuration options for the launcher.

Yeah, it is quite handy.

It reads your gmails and reminds you about appointments, shipping, reservations, meetings, etc. Also alerts me about sports scores, research I've preformed, new XKCD/other web comics that have a new issue, extended travel times to/from work so I can plan accordingly, when to leave for appointments so I won't be late... it is quite handy.

how does one create new screens that one can scroll to? I can only scroll to the left to the google now screen.

Hit your menu key and drag a widget to a page to the right, it will create it during the drag. You can't creat an empty page so you have to drag out a widget of any kind first, then you can add icons and other widgets, delete widgets etc after it's created.

I'm waiting to see what the next Nexus phone will be like before I upgrade, but that Nexus 5 is looking very tempting. If the Nexus 6 is curved, I'll be getting a 5 and kicking myself for waiting so long.

you can tweak MUCH more of it using Wanam and Xposed.... might give that a try, it's awesome. Custom rows and columns, resizeable icons etc.

And after downloading this, install Wanam and Xposed installer and get the XposedGEL module. /it will allow custom rows and columns as well as let you shrink icons in homescreen, app drawer, folders etc. It's AWESOME!

If your device isn't supported officially in the play Store you can still install this launcher and it's search.apk counterpart and it works perfectly. I'm using it on my Note 3 as we speak.

People can use google now? I can't get it to show anything but the occasional email that I have yet to read.

It doesn't let me configure anything. It only guesses what I want. I guess even I am a long time gmail and google calendar user I have nothing for it. I don't know if I will install it on my nexus 7 2013 tablet. I wouldn't mind a bit more configuration options for the launcher.

Are you sure you are using the right thing? My Google Now doesn't show any unread emails. It gives me traffic, weather, sports scores, tracking info, that sort of thing.

Installed on my Nexus 4. This is going to be extremely useful for certain things like navigating while driving. Hell, this is one of the major features I wanted in a new device. So long as the phone's battery life doesn't suffer too much, I may not need one for some time to come now.

Dangit! I can't install it on my Galaxy Nexus from Verizon (which still hasn't received the Android 4.3 update that exists for it).

Which is, in no small part, why I'm leaving Verizon. I went back and forth with their so-called support, and they wouldn't even admit that they were behind on updates, much less that their updates suck.

Same here. Picked up a gently used unlocked Moto X, switched to T-Mobile last week and haven't looked back.

Installed on my Nexus 4. This is going to be extremely useful for certain things like navigating while driving. Hell, this is one of the major features I wanted in a new device. So long as the phone's battery life doesn't suffer too much, I may not need one for some time to come now.

Unrelated protip that I feel the need to share, because so many people seem to not know about it: Current phone batteries work like car batteries, not old school rechargeables, in that every deep discharge causes harm to the battery. So if you want to keep your phone battery working for a long time, plug it in at every opportunity.

And this is how Google deals w/both carriers' and Samsung's power in the Android space... Pull everything but the basic functionality out of the core OS and bundle it in Google-branded apps. The launcher was one of the last major things left.

Now Google can completely bypass its "partners" for a significant portion of updates and they don't really have a choice in the matter. Android is still "open" but you're going to have to a do a lot of wheel-reinventing if you want to fork. Google apps are take all or take none, and if you take all, they basically own your user experience.

Personally I don't use it even on my N5 (although I tested it on my Galaxy S2 and Nexus 7 before getting the N5 and it worked fine even then). It's a nice lightweight launcher but I like the homescreen page setup on traditional launchers better so I typically use Nova. That way I can have more rows/columns than the limited layout of the Google launcher and there are a few other minor things I prefer. You still get the translucency effects and most everything else. The "always on" invocation of Now and the fullscreen widget on the leftmost page aren't there but I didn't ever use that anyway. You can still open Now with a swipe up from the bottom and I find that even easier than swiping all the way to the left anyway.

Either way, it'll just depend on user preference. It's definitely worth checking out to see if you like it.

Google apps are take all or take none, and if you take all, they basically own your user experience.

GAPPS are all bundled together when you download them, but you can uninstall anything you don't want after the initial install.

You can dump updates and/or disable them, but you can't get rid of them, at least not on any stock Android build I've seen. Android device vendors are free to not go that way if they so choose in their device ROMs, but if they do they lose the ability to include ANY Google apps, including the Play Store.

Installed on my Nexus 4. This is going to be extremely useful for certain things like navigating while driving. Hell, this is one of the major features I wanted in a new device. So long as the phone's battery life doesn't suffer too much, I may not need one for some time to come now.

Unrelated protip that I feel the need to share, because so many people seem to not know about it: Current phone batteries work like car batteries, not old school rechargeables, in that every deep discharge causes harm to the battery. So if you want to keep your phone battery working for a long time, plug it in at every opportunity.

While technically correct, this deserves some clarification. Standard car starting batteries really shouldn't get below 50% discharged or they'll never be the same again. Lithium-ion batteries, while it's better to not discharge them deeply if you can avoid it, don't get destroyed by deep discharging once or twice. Car batteries can and do.

Everyone likes to talk about tips and tricks to extend Li-ion battery life like they're NiCads or lead acids, but there's really not that much magic to them.

Li-ion batteries have a life expectancy that they will die after, no mater what the usage. Heavy charging/discharging can kill a battery faster, but even if you leave a Li-ion battery on the shelf or use it very carefully, it will eventually cease to hold a charge simply because of the makeup of the chemicals inside. A Li-ion battery's days are numbers starting when the battery is sealed in the factory.

Aside from the life expectancy that you can't get around, there are two other major factors that determine Li-ion longevity. The first is heat while operating or charging. This will lead to faster wear and will kill the battery sooner. The other is charge cycles. A Li-ion battery has a natural limit to the amount of times it can be charged/discharged (called a charge cycle). The act of discharging and recharging a Li-ion battery, even a little bit, is damaging. This is where you're technically correct. Li-ion batteries do die faster if you discharge them more, but it's not really the act of discharging them to zero, it's that you're burning through charge cycles. You are definitely correct that you should throw your device on a charger whenever possible: you're conserving the limited amount of cycles the battery can do and buying lifetime for your battery.

On the topic of the article, just installed Google Now Launcher on my Nexus 4.. it's going to take some getting used to.

Dangit! I can't install it on my Galaxy Nexus from Verizon (which still hasn't received the Android 4.3 update that exists for it).

Which is, in no small part, why I'm leaving Verizon. I went back and forth with their so-called support, and they wouldn't even admit that they were behind on updates, much less that their updates suck.

We left Verizon for Aio a few weeks ago and haven't looked back for similar reasons.

Does Google Now still cripple itself if you have location data turned off? When the original function came out I wanted to use it on my Galaxy Nexus, but swiping upward just swirls and swirls with the logo and won't even allow basic searching. Meh.

Ron Amadeo / Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work.